“Man, you’re wrong!” Fiercely Nap flung the words.  “I tell you there is no love between us.  I killed her love long ago.  And as for myself—­”

“Love doesn’t die,” broke in Lucas Errol quietly.  “I know all about it, Boney.  Guess I’ve always known.  And if you tell me that your love for Anne Carfax is dead, I tell you that you lie!” Again he faintly smiled.  “But I don’t like insulting you, old chap.  It’s poor sport anyway.  Besides, I’m wanting you.  That’s why—­”

He stopped abruptly.  A curious change had come over Nap, a change so unexpected, so foreign to the man’s grim nature, that even he, who knew him as did none other, was momentarily taken by surprise.  For suddenly, inexplicably, Nap’s hardness had gone from him.  It was like the crumbling of a rock that had withstood the clash of many tempests and yielded at last to the ripple of a summer tide.

With a sudden fierce movement he dropped down upon his knees beside the bed, flinging his arms wide over his brother’s body in such an agony of despair as Lucas had never before witnessed.

“I wish I were dead!” he cried out passionately.  “I wish to Heaven I had never lived!”

It was a cry wrung from the very depths of the soul, a revelation of suffering of which Lucas had scarcely believed him capable.  It opened his eyes to much that he had before but vaguely suspected.

He laid a hand instantly and very tenderly upon the bowed head.  “Shucks, Boney!” he remonstrated gently.  “Just when you are wanted most!”

A great sob shook Nap.  “Who wants me?  I’m nothing but a blot on the face of creation, an outrage, an abomination—­a curse!”

“You’re just the biggest thing in that woman’s life, dear fellow,” answered the tired voice.  “You hang on to that.  It’ll hold you up, as God always meant it should.”

Nap made an inarticulate sound of dissent, but the quiet restraint of his brother’s touch seemed to help him.  He became still under it, as if some spell were upon him.

After a time Lucas went on in the weary drawl that yet held such an infinite amount of human kindness.  “Did you think I’d cut you out, Boney?  Mighty lot you seem to know of me!  It’s true that for a time I thought myself necessary to her.  Maybe, for a time I was.  She hadn’t much to live for anyway.  It’s true that when you didn’t turn up in Arizona I left off expecting you to be faithful to yourself or to her.  And so it seemed best to take what she gave and to try to make her as happy as circumstances would allow.  But I never imagined that I ruled supreme.  I know too well that what a woman has given once she can never give again.  I didn’t expect it of her.  I never asked it.  She gave me what she could, and I—­I did the same for her.  But that bargain wouldn’t satisfy either of us now.  No—­no!  We’ll play the game like men—­like brothers.  And you must do your part.  Believe me, Boney, I desire nothing so earnestly as her happiness, and if when I come to die I have helped to make this one woman happy, then I shall not have lived in vain.”